Like many countries in South and Central America, peace is often fluctuating in and out of reach. Nicaragua is one such country; no stranger to revolution and uprising. For forty-three years, from 1936 to 1979, the country was ruled by the Somoza family. The Nicaraguan Revolution (1960’s to 1970’s) began as a result of the opposition to the Somoza dictatorship.
The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) led the campaign with the intention of overthrowing the dictatorship. The violent civil unrest garnered much international attention which revealed the country to be one of the major ‘proxy war’ battlegrounds of the Cold War.
The overthrow of the Somoza regime, in 1978-79, was a bloody affair as the Sandinistas forcefully took power in July 1979. This was closely followed by the Contra War of the 1980’s. The opposing parties: the FSLN (backed by the Soviets) and the Contras (backed by the USA) fought a bloody war for Nicaragua.
In 2018, as usually happens with a country constantly balancing on the scales of peace and war, unrest broke out against the former rebel liberators; the Sandinistas, as they found themselves becoming what they swore to destroy. Daniel Ortega, who has been the president since 2007, implemented social security reforms that saw a 5% tax increase to old-age and disability pensions and increased the contributions paid by both employees and employers. The taxes were implemented to restock the country’s social security accounts after Ortega allegedly ran them dry. A band aid solution for a larger corrupt problem.
The government was accused of using the National Social Security Institute (INSS) as a source of “petty cash”, which left many Nicaraguans’ feeling that pensioners and workers were now being forced to pay the price for government mismanagement.
After five days of unrest in 2018, in which nearly thirty people were killed, Ortega announced the cancellation of the reforms. However the opposition has grown to denounce Ortega, and demand his resignation, becoming one of the largest protests in his government’s history and the deadliest civil conflict since the end of the Nicaraguan Revolution. On 29 September 2018, political demonstrations were declared illegal by President Ortega. Even in 2021 the country continues to exist in a state of unrest with ongoing disappearances and army and police violence.
Luciano Garcia is one of the many Nicara- guans who have experienced the political effects of the recent revolution. Garcia was the executive president of Hagamos Democracia, an organisation that aimed to “create a single voice of Nicaraguan exiles” and strengthen the demands of opposition in Nicaragua. In 2018 the Ortega regime illegally cancelled its legal status.
Garcia was forced to leave Nicaragua after being informed that the Ortega regime had planned to launch an accusation against him, and look for an excuse to possibly murder him. He was forced to hide in a secure location while a formal accusation was published in the media by the regime. This painted him as a political dissident. After realising the situation would not improve, Garcia fled the country through the mountains, arriving in a small town in Honduras where friends waited to help him into Costa Rica.
In his own words Garcia says: “The transition from having a normal life and suddenly having to flee and become a refugee is like going from day to night as my family and home were removed, and I had to leave to a new country where the customs are not my own. It’s an emotionally complex situation. I also feel like a prisoner because as a refugee you do not have the right or freedom to leave the host country without permissions or fear of retribution from the government at home.”
The state of persecution and threats through social media and news outlets in Nicaragua continue against Garcia and other political refugees, making the likelihood of a return to his home country a complicated and unrealistic goal. For Garcia it would only be possible to return to Nicaragua if the current government could guarantee that those wrongly accused of crimes would not be accused again while under a sense of false amnesty. He also says: “The government would have to provide a guarantee that they will not attempt to murder me, and they will respect all my legal and human rights. Yet, under the current regime I see the conditions of my secure return very difficult to guarantee”.
The future of Nicaragua is uncertain as violence continues against those fighting for a better society. Yet many, like Garcia continue to work towards this goal: “For me, peace means to live in a society where citizens’ rights are respected, social justice is promoted and where there exists a real State of Rights untarnished by dictatorship”.
PERSONAL TESTIMONY
By Luciano Garcia
April 18, 2018 marked the beginning of a change that many of us expected, but it began the worst chapter of repression in the history of Nicaragua. Not even in Somoza’s regime had anything like it been seen before.
From the beginning of April until my departure to Honduras on July 25th, 2018, I was witness to the atrocities against unarmed people. Persecution, torture, assassinations by hitmen, disappearances, imprisonment of innocents, mass exiles of young people and families… in short, something terrifying for thousands of Nicaraguans. On the 25th of July 2020, I completed two years of exile and I still haven’t recovered from the pain and loneliness of living in a country where the customs are different from yours. Where protesting for your country is not the same, where you see people without decent work, hungry and sleeping on the floor and in parks suffering from the cold. It only makes you think that all this pain is not fair.
I have never promoted nor will I promote any war or exits from power that are not within the framework of legality – and so I will always promote that the departure of the current dictator Ortega is a right that Nicaraguans have to demand. To ask for elections that come with electoral reforms that guarantee the transparency of the process is a legitimate right in the face of so many injustices and repression. We are a failed state. That is our pain to bear, as exiles who demand the prompt and orderly departure of Ortega. We cannot and must not continue with this pain once again. Once again Nicaraguan families are divided, and today more than ever our country needs the help of international communities. They are the only ones who can advocate awareness for the suffering of our repressed and persecuted Nicaraguan people. We are obliged to re-build the rule of law as the only available weapon against this dictator.
Isabella Porras majors in Documentary Photography at the Queensland College of Art, her work centers around exploring Australian identity, migration and personal life. https://bellaevaphotograper.wixsite.com/portfolio
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